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AS/A Level Thinking Skills 9694
Unit 6: Problem Solving – Advanced
Recommended Prior Knowledge
Students need to have an understanding and proficiency in the skills and aptitudes of either O level Mathematics or IGCSE Mathematics
Context
This unit develops the problem solving skills introduced in Unit 3, and involves their application to more advanced problems. As with the other problem solving units, it is
completely independent of the critical thinking units (1, 2, 4, 5 and 8). It prepares students for the Problem Solving questions in Paper 3 of the A2 exam
Outline
Paper 3 tests similar skills to Paper 1, yet students will need to apply mathematical skills beyond those of junior/ elementary school (though not beyond IGCSE).
Students will need to be able to apply: basic probability (including the combination of independent and non-independent events); linear and simultaneous equations to
express and solve problems; integer powers; tree and decision diagrams; calculations of means, modes and medians; Venn and Carroll diagrams
Thinking Skills
Suggested Teaching activities
Learning resources
Data selection and
processing
Stubbornness and inventiveness are equally important parts
of the intellectual toolkit required for problem-solving.
Students should be given as much chance as possible to
tackle problems (such as those on the puzzle website
mentioned in the learning resources) in groups of 2 or 3 and
report their findings back to the class.
For a selection of logical problems which involve careful reading and
analysis, try www.folj.com/puzzles .
These are graded according to difficulty.
Finding methods and
procedures
The Monty Hall problem (the game show problem with the
goats and the car and the doors) is a good way at introducing
some of the complexities of probabilistic reasoning. See the
Learning Resources column for details.
Polya – Part II How to Solve it: a dialogue gives a set of general questions to
be considered when tackling problems of any kind.
Polya – section on ‘variation of the problem’ (pages 209-214), section on
‘wisdom of proverbs’ (pages 221-5) and section on ‘working backwards’
(pages 225-232) give general advice on tackling problems, the method for
whose solution is unclear.
There is also a variety of problems (not all of which are mathematical) in Part
IV Problems, hints, solutions.
A second problem which demonstrates the value of
exhaustively tabulating the various options available in a
problem is the 5 Hats problem. See the Learning Resources
column for details.
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Thinking Skills
Suggested Teaching activities
Learning resources
A comprehensive overview of methods which can be used for problemsolving is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem-solving
In particular see the section called ‘6. Problem-solving techniques’
The Monty Hall problem is described on numerous sites on the Internet –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem for example.
The 5 Hat problem, and a number of variations of it are described at
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=878489&lastnode_id=0
The problem is introduced as a simplified game in ‘Why do buses come in
threes?’ Chapter 15.
Identifying relationships
and hypotheses
This extends the skills introduced in Unit 3 to more complex
and more real-life situations.
Useful websites for considering what hypotheses can be drawn from data
include http://www.statistics.gov.uk/glance/ and http://www.fedstats.gov/cgibin/A2Z.cgi which contain a mass of graphs, many of which can be used to
stimulate productive discussion about possible hypotheses.
Analysing and
modelling
This extends the skills introduced in Unit 3 to more complex
and more real-life situations.
A collection of questions about modelling data with a variety of different
functions is to be found at:
A good problem to engage students in the need for a good
model is to ask groups of students to predict the population of
their town in the year 2020, and justify their prediction. This
can prompt discussion of the appropriateness of linear models
and extrapolation.
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/accountability/testing/eoc/Algebra2/Sa
mples/Fall2003AlgebraIIFormWS4.pdf
In order to refresh memories of the usefulness and of the
skills required for solving simultaneous equations, try the
following activity: students write down the first 5 terms of a
linear sequence, and then pair up and investigate whose
sequence will give higher values as the sequences progress.
For instance the sequence 6, 10, 14, 18, 22… overtakes the
sequence 15, 18, 21, 24, 27 … at after the 10th term. This can
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Thinking Skills
Suggested Teaching activities
Learning resources
be proved by a table, a graph, or by algebraic means.
Students can guess when the sequences cross first (in order
to inject some competitions into the process).
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